consumption situations, cultural differences, decision making, food prosumption Chunyan Xie and Kjell Grønhaug
Chunyan Xie is a Professor of Marketing at the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Norway Kjell Grønhaug is a Professor of Business Administration at Norwegian School of Economics, Norway
NJB Vol. 66 , No. 3 (Autumn 2017) To Cheat or Not to Cheat?
1. Introduction
This study adds to extant research on food prosumption by investigating two bound-ary conditions of decision making in food prosumption behaviour, consumption situa-tions and cultural contexts. More specifically, we apply an extended version of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) (Azjen, 1991) to examine antecedents of food prosumption propensity across two different consumption contexts (involving others vs. not involving others) and two cultural contexts (individ-ualistic vs. collective culture). In the recent years prosumption behaviour has attracted increasing attentions from academics. Pro-sumption is defined as “value creation activ-ities undertaken by the consumers that result in production of products they eventually consume and that become their consump-tion experiences” (Xie, Bagozzi, and Troye, 2008). In the current study, we study one type of food prosumption behaviour, dinner preparation, which is a central part of peo-ple’s daily life across cultures. Dinner prepa-ration is a complex process since it includes multiple acts such as planning, purchasing, cooking, eating and disposing. It can also become a habitual behaviour after frequent performance. Therefore dinner preparation varies in the degree of deliberative effort.
Moreover, dinner preparation can be con-ducted in different consumption contexts, for instance, either in an individual context without involving other persons or in a social context involving family members or friends.
Previous research has studied dinner prepa-ration as a food prosumption behaviour from dif-ferent theoretical perspectives (Xie et al., 2008;
Troye and Supphellen, 2012; Androulaki, 2014).
Some researchers investigate antecedents of food prosumption propensity by applying es-tablished attitudes-behaviour theories (Xie et al.
2008); others examine how people’s prosump-tion behaviour positively biases their evaluaprosump-tion of prosumption outcomes (i.e., a dish) and input products (i.e., a dinner kit) through
self-attribu-tion and self-integraself-attribu-tion (Troye and Supphel-len, 2012). However, these studies are mostly conducted in the western cultures and focus on dinner preparation in social consumption situa-tions that involve other persons. Little is known whether such food prosumption behaviour would vary in other consumption contexts that do not involve others, or vary in other cultural contexts.
The current study attempts to address this gap by exploring two boundary condi-tions of decision making in food prosump-tion behaviour. More specifically, we apply an extended version of TPB to study drivers of food prosumption propensity across two different consumption contexts (involving vs. not involving other persons) and two cul-tural contexts (individualistic vs. collective culture). Previously, Xie et al. (2008) apply an adapted version of the Theory of Trying (TT) to address immediate antecedents of pro-sumption intentions, which include three at-titudes components (atat-titudes toward trying and succeeding, attitudes toward trying and failing, and attitudes toward process), sub-jective norms, self-efficacy, and past behav-iour. In the current study, we apply a similar but more parsimony approach, an extended version of TPB, to investigate antecedents of prosumption tendency across consumption contexts and culture settings. A primary reason for choosing the TPB as the theoreti-cal point of departure is that the theory has been widely used in previous research related to a great variety of consumption activities in different cultural contexts and thus demon-strates generalizability and robustness. We extend the TPB by adding past behaviour into the original model as the fourth driver of in-tentions, in addition to attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behaviour control. We do so in order to capture possible habitual processes in food prosumption, since dinner preparation is an everyday behaviour that is performed frequently and can become habit-ual. A detailed description of the extended The impact of consumption situations and culture differences
TPB is presented in the theory section.
Our study contributes to extant research on food prosumption by testing two bound-ary conditions of decision making underly-ing such behaviours. First, it examines the contingency of decision making in food prosumption on the consumption contexts.
Our finding shows that a habitual process is determinant in an individual consumption context that does not involve other persons while a deliberative process is dominant in a social consumption context involving others.
Second, we test another boundary condition of decision making in food prosumption, namely cultural variations. Our results show that in the social consumption context in-volving others, attitudes and perceived be-havioural control are significant predictors of prosumption tendency for respondents from an individualistic culture; however, subjec-tive norms and perceived behavioural control are determinant of prosumption propensity for respondents from a collective culture.
The rest of the paper is organized as fol-lows: in the next section we present the TPB and discuss key aspects of how consumer decision making and choice have been dealt with in the literature. This part serves as input for the development of our research perspec-tive (i.e., an extended version of the TPB) to study food prosumption behaviour. Then, we derive hypotheses on impacts of consump-tion situaconsump-tions and cultural differences on decision making in food prosumption. After this we report our research methodology and findings. Finally the findings are discussed and implications highlighted.
2. Theoretical background
2.1 The theory of planned behaviour The theory of planned behaviour (Ajzen, 1991) is based on the best-known and most widely supported theory on attitudes-behaviour re-lations, the theory of reasoned action (TRA) (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975). In the TRAbehav-iour is determined by behavbehav-ioural intentions.
These behavioural intentions are, in turn, influenced by attitudes toward the behaviour and subjective norms. Attitudes toward the behaviour refer to one’s positive or negative evaluations of performing the behaviour;
subjective norms refer to the perceived so-cial pressure to perform or not to perform the behaviour. In addition to attitudes and subjective norms, perceived behavioural control has been added in the TPB as a third factor influencing intentions and behaviour.
Perceived behavioural control is defined as the person’s beliefs as to how easy or difficult performance of the behaviour is likely to be (Ajzen 1985). This construct was included to predict behaviours that are not completely under volitional control. Perceived behav-ioural control is supposed to reflect the op-portunities for performing behaviour and/
or the requisite resources needed for acting;
and it is assumed to influence behaviour both directly and indirectly through intentions.
The path from perceived behavioural control to intentions represents a volitional process.
It captures the motivational influence of control on behaviour through the initiation of intention formation or activation (Ajzen, 1991). The direct path from perceived behav-ioural control to behaviour represents actual control over opportunities or resources and reflects a non-volitional source of influence (Ajzen, 1987). The inclusion of perceived be-havioural control has been found to increase the predictive power of the model (Madden et al., 1992).
Most studies applying the TPB focus on the behavioural intention and its anteced-ents. In the current study, we choose also to focus on the behavioural intention and leave out the link between behaviour intentions and behaviour. In total, the TPB captures well the deliberative processes in decision mak-ing, however, it lacks the capacity to address the automatic processes in decision making, as discussed below.
NJB Vol. 66 , No. 3 (Autumn 2017)
2.2 Decision making processes:
deliberative vs. automatic processes Traditionally, consumer decision making is treated as an individual, rational, and deliberative process. Rational choice theo-ries (March, 1978) with the integration of
“bounded rationality” (Simon, 1979) assume that people first assess possible choice alter-natives according to a certain set of criteria and then make a choice that maximizes or satisfies their utilities. However, such ra-tional choice theories have difficulty to ex-plain many simple and routinized decision making processes in our daily life.
This discrepancy between rational choice theory and observation of actual choice ex-perience has been addressed by Bettman et al. (1998) in their constructive choice frame-work. Constructive choice theory posits that people employ different choice heuristics in the different decision making contexts based on subconscious processes such as pattern matching or categorization. Such choice heuristics are choice-making strategies that range from extensive and deliberative de-cision rules to less involved heuristics (e.g.,
“choose the same brand as last time”). Posit-ing an array of heuristics enables constructive choice theory to incorporate both rational choice processes and simple choice processes.
Recent research pay increased attention to the importance of automatic or non-con-scious influences on consumer choices and behaviour. For instance, Bargh (2001; 2002) extends the consideration of non-conscious motivations beyond hedonic impulses and physiological need states (e.g., in addiction) to the operation of any kind of goal or mo-tivation a person can have consciously. The non-conscious influence on choice and be-haviours can be obtained by the mere, passive activations of the relevant motivations and goals. Therefore, both rational, deliberative processes and routinized, automatic pro-cesses are considered important in consumer decision making and choice.
Classical attitudes-behaviour relation models such as the theory of reasoned action (TRA) (Fishbein and Azjen, 1975) and TPB (Azjen, 1991) focus mainly on deliberative decision making process. They propose that consumers form intentions and perform behaviours after a deliberative evaluation of factors such as reflected in their attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behaviour control. These rational behaviour models are suitable to explain behaviours that are not frequently performed or have significant importance to people, but have difficulty in explaining behaviour that are performed fre-quently and are of less importance to people.
To remedy this weakness, past experience is introduced into the classical models to ac-count for habitual behaviours, for instance in the Theory of Trying (Bagozzi and Warsaw, 1990). Thus, in order to explain both by ra-tional, deliberative processes and habitual, automatic processes in decision making, the TPB may need to be extended.
2.3 Extended Theory of Planned Behaviour
To capture variations in degree of delibera-tive effort, we extend the TPB by including the impact of past behaviour on behavioural intentions. Previous research suggests that performing a behaviour frequently leads to the formation of a habit; once established, such a habit may control subsequent behav-iour without deliberate cognitive mediation (e.g., Quellette and Wood 1998). Quellette and Wood (1998) argued that past behav-iour may guide future responses in two ways.
When the context is stable and the action is well learned, the performance may become automatic. Such habitual behaviour directly affects future behaviour intentions and behaviour. This is consistent with Bargh’s (2002) argument of non-conscious influence on decision and behaviour. On the other hand, when the context is unstable or the ac-tion is not well learned, a more deliberative The impact of consumption situations and culture differences
162 process may be necessary to engage in the behaviour and past behaviour will contribute less to the explanation of intentions. Bagozzi and Warsaw (1990) also claims that the ef-fect of past behaviour can be separated into two components: frequency and recency of past behaviour; and only frequency of past behaviour is proposed to influence inten-tions. Empirical evidence supports the role of past behaviour on intentions as well. For in-stance, Conner and Armitage (1998) showed
that past behaviour explained 7.2 percent of variance in intentions after controlling for attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control. Therefore, we consider the inclusion of past behaviour in the origi-nal TPB will enable the model to capture both rational, deliberative processes and habitual, automatic processes in decision making.
The extended model underlying our study is shown in Figure 1.
3. Hypotheses
3.1 The impact of consumption situa-tion on decision making
Actual decision making usually takes place in different consumption situations and various aspects of the consumption situations need to be taken into consideration. One important aspect of the consumption situations is the presence of others. As long as other persons in one way or another are taken into account,
this may have an impact on the decision mak-ing process. Existent research has explicitly addressed the impact of the presence of other persons on decision making. For instance, attitudes-behaviour relation models such as the TRA and TPB incorporate the construct of